How to Help Your Child with Writing Difficulties

A sentence is like a car trip: the longer it takes, the greater the chances of getting lost! To limit the number of errors in their writing, you can advise your child to use shorter sentences. This way of writing will also help them do the following:

• Express their ideas more clearly
• Use better syntax 
• Easily identify the subject
• Follow subject-verb agreement rules
• Etc.

Teachers generally give their students a revision method to help them identify errors in writing. If your child hasn’t been taught a specific method, you can encourage them to come up with their own. Here are some examples:

• Highlight the words they’re unsure how to spell
• Draw a line connecting each noun (or pronoun) and verb and check the agreement
• Find and check the verb tenses
• Circle the nouns
• Draw a line connecting each noun to its determiner
• Etc.

Another effective way for your child to improve their writing is to read their texts out loud. As they verbalize what they’ve written, they’ll quickly identity the following issues:

• Unnecessary repetitions
• Syntax errors
• Poorly organized arguments or structure
• Etc.

Everyone loves a good story! Why not encourage your child to write their own? This activity is a great way to make writing fun. Your child will not only learn language rules and improve their syntax skills, but also use their imagination. You can also write a story as a family! Here’s how to get started:

• Choose a subject
• Write an opening sentence
• Create a character and give them an objective
• Come up with a plot
• Give the story a moral
• Etc.

Reading and writing are a bit like milk and cookies: they complement each other! To improve writing skills, nothing beats reading. When a child reads, they’re exposed to the following:

• Good spelling
• Explicit and implicit facts
• Proper grammar
• A host of new words
• Useful synonyms
• Etc.